IRS scam alerts

[waltky]

The IRS doesn't call unless they notify you by mail first...

Indian call center employees posing as the IRS may have bilked Americans out of millions
October 6,`16 — Computer savvy criminals posing as Internal Revenue Service officers at call centers in India may have bilked unsuspecting Americans out of millions, police in India said Thursday.

Police in Mumbai conducted a dramatic midnight raid at a call center in the country's commercial capital of Mumbai Tuesday, and detained 770 employees for questioning, of which 70 were later charged with fraud, wrongful impersonation and violating the country's Internet safety law. The call centers were making more than $150,000 a day through these scams that took place for a little over a year, police said. The callers told their American victims they were conducting a "tax revision" or that they had defaulted on payments to the I.R.S. and would then obtain their personal finance information and withdraw money from their bank accounts, according to Param Bir Singh, a senior police officer in Mumbai who led the raid. It was one of the largest such raids in recent memory, he added. “These are the people who bring a bad name to India’s IT industry and it is very important to weed them out,” Singh said.

More than 200 police officers descended on a tall, glass-fronted office building where the nine call centers were operating during Tuesday's midnight raid after being tipped off by neighbors. “It looked like a regular office building, and employed a lot of young people who spoke English and had a good knowledge of computers,” Singh said. “It was a very sophisticated operation they were running.” Meanwhile, in another call center in the suburb of New Delhi, police say workers allegedly duped thousands of American citizens by offering to remove a virus from their computers. On Sunday, police in Noida arrested six people for running a call center that sold insurance to Indians by day, but by night, also allegedly duped American consumers with fake offers of tech support to correct malware and viruses.

[center]
Policemen come out of one of the closed call centers in the outskirts of Mumbai, India.

This is not the first time fraudulent call centers targeting American citizens have been raided in India. As more and more American businesses outsourced their back-end operations to India in the past two decades, it generated a thriving IT industry here employing millions of English-speaking, software professionals, and birthing a sub-culture of sorts including movies and novels. But some have also taken advantage of the trend and found ways to access data of American customers and defraud them. Call center crimes targeting Indian customers have also become a big “nuisance” for Indians, says Raj Kumar Mishra, deputy superintendent of police in Noida’s special task force in Noida, outside New Delhi. In the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, for example, such crimes have increased 4,300 percent in the last five years.

Most of the complaints are about callers that try to access the pin number of the ATM card of customers and online bank frauds, he said. Nearly 300 people involved in such crimes were arrested in the state last year. “There are leakages from unscrupulous bank staff who are selling the customer data illegally. That is a hole we have to plug,” Mishra said. The state is now setting up two police stations that will handle cases of call center and online fraud exclusively. Earlier this year, another operation was busted here that ran illegal Internet-calling exchanges in New York and Noida and offered cheap rates for callers, Mishra said. A deposition by the U.S. Bureau of Consumer Protection told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July this year that Indian call centers, much like similar fraud from Jamaica, are emerging as a big source of concern. Such calls are likely to target older American citizens and often offer technical support to resolve non-existent computer problems.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...381_story.html[/quote]

[Peter1469]

My mom got a call like that. She was gullible enough to call back. My brother let me know so I intervened in time but she still called them back after that to confront them. I told her that wasn't a good idea and to report the number to the Louisiana AG office.

[waltky]

Scammers get nabbed...

India arrests dozens posing as IRS agents in scam that targeted Americans
Oct. 6, 2016 - “They were stunned to see the police,” deputy police commissioner Parag Manere, who supervised the raid, said.

Authorities in India have dropped the hammer on several "call centers" that were nerve centers for an aggressive scam intended to swindle Americans out of cash by posing as the Internal Revenue Service. Indian police said at least 70 people have been arrested for taking part in the scam and investigators are looking at hundreds more. Nine call centers were disrupted by the crackdown. "They were stunned to see the police," deputy police commissioner Parag Manere, who supervised the raid, said. "They never thought that police would raid them." The suspects were charged with extortion, fraud and the use of a criminal threat.

The goal of the scammers is simple, officials say -- call as many U.S. residents as possible, pose as an IRS agent and tell them they owe back taxes. The coup de grace comes when the scammers tell the unsuspecting, and often frightened, Americans that they will be arrested and taken to jail unless they pony up the cash immediately. Authorities say the scammers often don't raise suspicion because they speak with an American accent and they give no indication the money is going overseas. Officials say they set it up so the cash was wired to U.S. bank accounts before being transferred to India. And a lot of people fell for it.

Incredibly, the bogus IRS call centers were taking in about $150,000 per day for a year before the con was uncovered. So far, some of the big wigs of the scam have eluded capture and Indian authorities believe there are almost certainly accomplices in the United States. Indian investigators got into position to bust the IRS ring after an informant came forward a few weeks ago. Police said more than 600 other suspected scammers are under investigation and could also be arrested. Impersonating the IRS to unlawfully collect money is hardly a new concept. Several people have been arrested and charged inside the United States in recent years for doing the same thing. Authorities say millions of dollars have been swindled out of residents since the scam started about three years ago.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...?spt=sec&or=tn

[waltky]

Indian IRS call center scam mastermind nabbed...

India arrests suspected mastermind in $300M call center scam
April 8, 2017 -- Indian police said they arrested a suspected mastermind behind a $300 million call center scam that targeted Americans.

Sagar Thakkar, 24, also known as Shaggy, was arrested late Friday after he arrived at Mumbai airport from Dubai. Officials said he ran dozens of India-based call centers since 2013 and trained employees to target some 15,000 U.S. citizens by posing as Internal Revenue Service employees. The callers allegedly threatened the victims with legal action if they were not given access to bank accounts for debts that didn't exist, local news reported.

Indian police said they arrested Sagar Thakkar, 24, a suspected mastermind behind a $300 million call center scam that targeted Americans. Pictured: An Indian employee works at Gecis, a call center based in Gurgaon, Harayana, about 20 miles south-west from New Delhi, India, in this file picture dated May 2006.

In October, the Justice Department charge 61people in India and the United States in connection to the scheme. Thakkar allegedly fled the country at the time.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...&utm_medium=13